The Shock of the Now - Issue #179
Afternoon All - Welcome to Issue 179 of The Shock of the Now! I hope you’re having an enjoyable week.
This week, the full issue includes twelve Recommended Exhibitions, as well as twelve fresh Artist Opportunities.
I hope you enjoy Issue 179, and if so do forward it along! As always, questions and comments are welcome, so feel free to get in touch, H x
Recommended Exhibitions Opening This Week :
Igor Moritz - ‘On, and On’ Solo Exhibition - Cob Gallery, Bloomsbury (26th June - 19th July, opening Wednesday 25th June, 6-8pm)
Cob Gallery presents Igor Moritz’s solo exhibition ‘On, and On’.
“Twilit visions of nocturnal dreamworlds on the cusp of wakefulness, Moritz’s images are the bearers of obscurely emotive meanings whose formal contours are powerfully affecting, even when the precise significance of their contents remains just out of reach. More interested by the structure and shape of sign-systems than the conclusiveness of what they might signify, Moritz creates equivocal spaces where internal and external realities seep into one another, leaving trails of meaning that refuse to lead us to any single destination. His compositions are peopled by pensive, often masked figures positioned in cryptic choreographies: brooding subjects often placed at the edge of their frames or taking up oblique positions within them, themselves framing planes of densely woven space or interacting with objects of opaque symbolic relevance.” - Cob Gallery
Hafsa Siddiqui - ‘A Creature Named Resentment’ Solo Exhibition - Under The Spell, Stockwell (26th June - 3rd August, opening Wednesday 25th June, 6-9pm)
Under The Spell presents Hafsa Siddiqui’s debut London solo exhibition ‘A Creature Named Resentment’.
“A Creature Named Resentment conjures a sculptural ensemble of four human figures, Anne, Raj, Gilbert, and Rebecca, slouching in quiet communion with a fifth presence: a serpent named Resentment. Steeped in the atmospheres of fractured connection, half-lived domesticity, and the emotional residue of the everyday, these bodies feel like husks of accumulated tension. A quiet intensity emanates from them, as if they are holding their breath in a clockless waiting room, or caught in the stillness during a family reckoning.” - Under The Spell
Baud Postma - ‘Cowboys & Flowers’ Solo Exhibition - Canopy Collections HQ, Bloomsbury (27th June - 3rd August, opening Thursday 26th June, 6-8pm)
Canopy Collections presents Baud Postma’s solo exhibition ‘Cowboys & Flowers’.
“The exhibition will present a new body of work inspired by AI-generated images of cowboys, which has never been exhibited before, alongside his ongoing photographic series of flowers. Postma takes a labour-intensive and technical approach to large-format photography. Over the past decade, he has become known for developing his own analogue working methods and creating images with a distinctive texture and colour palette. His latest series, Death of the Author, marks a significant evolution in his practice. By integrating generative text-to-image AI with traditional analogue techniques, Postma blurs the boundaries between human intention and machine interpretation.” - Canopy Collections
Eloise Hawser - ‘Civil Twilight’ Solo Exhibition - Flat Time House, Peckham (27th June - 1st August, opening Thursday 26th June, 6-8pm)
Flat Time House and Knotenpunkt present Eloise Hawser’s solo exhibition ‘Civil Twilight’
“Following a 6-month residency supported by Knotenpunkt, Hawser has developed a new body of work responding to the context of Flat Time House. Drawing from her longstanding interest in the shifting materiality of modern life, Civil Twilight explores media in transition, specifically newspapers, and how they’re encountered in public space. For this project Hawser documented the final day of distribution of London’s Evening Standard. After nearly 200 years of daily publication, the last daily format edition was distributed on 19 September 2024 with minimal fanfare. Presented for the first time, the collected interviews and video documentation record the otherwise unremarked disappearance of social and material structures within a sculptural installation.” - Flat Time House
Debjani Banerjee - ‘Jalsaghar’ Solo Exhibition - Mimosa House, Bloomsbury (27th June - 16th August, opening Thursday 26th June, 6-8:30pm)
Mimosa House presents Debjani Banerjee’s solo exhibition ‘Jalsaghar’. The opening evening will also feature a special live musical performance, ‘Swagatam’, performed by Mita Pujara and Kavi Pujara (7:30pm).
“Debjani Banerjee's exhibition Jalsaghar is an intricate exploration of identity, culture, and heritage. The title, which translates from Bengali as "The Music Room", hints at a space of collaboration and cultural expression. Banerjee's works delve into the multifaceted nature of her British Bengali identity, shaped by her experiences growing up in England during the 1980s. This backdrop provides a rich tapestry for examining the layers of cultural dissonance and hybridity that define her perspective. The title, Jalsaghar draws a thread from Satyajit Ray’s 1958 film of the same name, reinterpreting its atmosphere of listening, loss, and cultural transition through a contemporary, diasporic lens. It evokes a space of listening, intimacy and gathering, which underpins both the conceptual and material approach of the exhibition.” - Mimosa House